How Clinton and Bush would have handled the oil spill

These two Bushes can be reconciled, perhaps, by the state of the president’s public approval ratings after the disaster. Following 9/11, Americans could clearly identify the villains, and they rallied behind the president almost automatically. As political observers have noted, Bush can work wonders with a friendly crowd. But when his numbers were down and people saw nothing but hurricane-force winds to blame for their troubles, Bush was much less effective at rallying the troops, so to speak.

Considering the BP-Halliburton blame game that muddied the waters in the first days of the spill, the gulf crisis seems like a closer political parallel to Katrina: Bush wouldn’t have been handed a villain, and angry Americans may have turned him into one.